The “6 D”s of Exponentials.

The “6 D”s of Exponentials.

The structure of organizations is changing faster than it has ever been. Thus, an inevitable shift from “got an idea!” to “running a billion-dollar company” is occurring at a glance.

Fully focusing on the new wave of technological developments at an exponential scale of change, the ultimate size of the companies became smaller. Just because of the “6 D“s of technological exponentials, small, however disruptively innovative start-ups have huge impacts rather than huge corporations.

These “6 D”s put linear methods and companies out of the business:

Digitalisation: There are still many things in our daily life which work analogous, although we may ask how long they still will. Our life has digitalised itself and will continue this. It will be cheaper, faster and more efficient. Analogous companies will face a difficult situation in future – digitalisation will consume them slowly but clearly. The best example for this is the former camera producer Kodak. Once most famous company in the foto-business, the still huge company had to file for bankruptcy in the same year as small digital 13-people start-up Instagram was bought by Facebook for 100 million dollars.

Deception: Deception means that our current technology often deceives us. We do not recognize new technologies because we think linear and do not see the opportunities of exponentiality. However, what lies below our perception threshold today, can lead to explosive exponential growth already tomorrow. Be it 3D-printers or crypto-currencies – often it is the calmness after a hype where technology grows rapidly, albeit no one recognizes it or even sees a decay. For example, crypto-currency Bitcoin is not affected very much by its dramatic price decline – more important is its blockchain technology and the resulting opportunities also seen by many investors.

Disruption: Disruption is the creative destruction of old business areas, which creates new and better things. Be it the limousine company Uber revolutionizing urban mobility or AirBnB revolutionizing traditional vacationing – disruption is a new popular term, which will show up increasingly in future. Despite all resistance from politics and society, it seems only a question of time until the next business area is overrun by better ideas and recreated from scratch.

Demonetisation: Closely connected to disruption is demonetisation. Old business areas like hotels or taxi companies, where much money is wasted, will give way to more efficient solutions. Money flows from the pockets of big business and government back in the hands of individuals. Even intermediaries, which currently gain a lot with these businesses, have to take care not to get disrupted themselves. Decentralized ideas like LaZooz try already now to replace relatively new services like Uber. This development won’t spare any business areas – competition cares for continuous innovation.

Dematerialisation: Even 20 years ago there have been radios, televisions, computers, GPS-systems and the first smartphones. However, they were comparatively expensive, heavy, slow and hard to carry. Nowadays almost everyone has these things in his pockets. Current smartphones unite thousands of functions into one where in the past one has needed single appliances. This trend towards tininess will continue. It goes into the direction of tininess, which unites everything in itself. Already today, a growing number of digital nomads exploits dematerialisation to earn money from every possible location in the world. All they need comfortably suits a backpack – and soon probably even into pockets.

Democratization: Democracy is no exclusive domain of politics, but also one of technology. No democratic government in history enabled the equality which the internet offers us. Free access to knowledge, entertainment, business opportunities and much more is maybe the most joyful progress exponential growth of the internet has provided us – a trend which is likely to continue. In the long-term, diverse technologies have the potential to fully democratize the world and make equality of opportunities possible. All they will do without restricting freedom like practiced by governments – in contrary they will enable freedom. The freedom which also includes freedom to not be dependent on companies one do not want to support. What one still buys without being informed, may well soon provide one’s own 3D printer.

Decentralization: Revolutionary Decentralisation – Decentrevolution – I see as an immediate consequence of the explicated six “D”. Decentralization is not restricted to the linearity of politics, it is enabled by the exponentiality of technology. Decentralization is the movement towards smaller units – the trend towards tininess. The consequences of decentralization are demonstrated by demonetisation, dematerialisation, and democratization. Its method is digitalisation, which steps forward deceptively to suddenly reorder old business areas disruptively.